The campaign reports are due today up at the Texas Ethics Commission, the City Secretary, and the HISD and HCC Board Services offices. Go check them out and spin them any way you can. I wonder how difficult it will be to access the H-Town City reports since they don’t really have all their systems going. Stay tuned!
Karla Cisneros is now on Off the Kuff today. Check this:
We continue with candidates in District H, where incumbent Council Member Ed Gonzalez is term limited. Today’s interview is with another Heights neighbor of mine, Karla Cisneros. Cisneros is a longtime educator and education activist, having served six years on the HISD Board of Trustees, including a stint as Board President. She was a teacher at Travis Elementary School and helped develop its SPARK Park while there, subsequently serving as the Assistant Director of the SPARK Park School Program. She has since returned to teaching and is now at Harvard Elementary School.
Check Karla out here: http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=68327.
Yesterday MLB announced the Four Franchise Players for each team. Name the only team whose four players are no longer with us?
There were sparks last night at the mayoral candidate forum as punches were thrown and some landed.
One take I found interesting last night was support for lifting the revenue cap. Two candidates kind of supported and five opposed. Will this have any bearing with voters if the item is placed on the ballot?
Here is how Rebecca Elliott of the Chron described last night’s chingasos:
Let the sparring begin.
Houston’s mayoral candidates duked it out at Tuesday night’s unusually lively mayoral forum, in which candidates had the opportunity to both debate a series of broad-ranging topics and quiz each other.
The event’s different format highlighted the race’s emerging political fault lines, most of which revolve around the city’s looming budget deficit. Issues of the hour included if and when to lift the city’s revenue cap, whether to close the fiscal gap by issuing new debt, and what to do about the controversial streets and drainage initiative known as ReBuild Houston.
At night’s end, City Councilman Stephen Costello was the self-declared “piñata,” having fielded a host of questions about ReBuild Houston, which was his brainchild, and received four of the seven questions that candidates posed to each other.
Costello and former Kemah Mayor Bill King, both of whom bill themselves as moderate fiscal conservatives, are thought to be in a battle for Houston’s right-leaning voters — a well-represented demographic at the forum, which was hosted by the United Republicans of Harris County.
The first question of the forum addressed whether to amend the city’s revenue cap in light of Houston’s looming $126 million deficit. Of the seven candidates in attendance, only former City Councilman Chris Bell and state Rep. Sylvester Turner proposed changes, with Bell calling for the cap to be repealed and Turner suggesting the city make exceptions for either public safety or to pay down city debt.
The next question, on ReBuild, set up each of the candidates to criticize the execution of ReBuild Houston, if not pan it entirely. That left Costello alone singing the program’s praises.
Other questions posed by the moderator, KHOU’s Doug Miller, touched on the Houston Police Department’s best chiefs in recent history and use of devices called Stingrays to collect cell phone data, as well as the city’s pensions and permitting processes.
Miller also offered candidates an opportunity to list the top three items on their to-do lists, should they replace term-limited Mayor Annise Parker.
However, sparks didn’t really begin to fly until the second half of the event, when each candidate had the chance to ask one other candidate a question. 2013 mayoral runner-up Ben Hall and businessman Marty McVey asked Costello about ReBuild, while King pressed him on fiscal discipline and former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia lobbed him a softball on improving the city’s permitting process.
Meanwhile, Costello went head-to-head with King on how King would fund the pensions of legacy members through his proposed defined-contribution model.
Turner, too, questioned King’s proposal to fund infrastructure projects through bond elections, saying that approach would “bankrupt the city.”
Garcia was the only other hopeful to receive a candidate question.
Bell inquired about when Garcia initially found out that a mentally ill inmate was being held in squalid conditions in the Harris County Jail, under his watch.
Garcia did not directly answer whether his former chief deputy had indeed told him about the case a year before it became public last fall, saying instead, “when I found out about this issue, I took action.”
All I am going to say is I get tired of Pete Rose’s act.
The Four Franchise Players of the Yankees are Joe Dimaggio, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth and of course they are no longer with us.
I am not going to argue with the four greatest living players – Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays but I wish Yogi Berra had gotten a mention.
I am not going to argue with the Four Franchise Players of the ‘Stros – Baggy, B-G-O, the Big Puma, and Nolan Ryan but you have to give an honorable mention to Joe Niekro, J.R. Richard, Mike Scott, Roy O. and Jose Cruuuuuuz!
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